New Features

Note The Session Shifting feature is not supported in Release 2.5. For 3-Screen Session Shifting, use the Cisco Internet Streamer CDS 2.3 software.

Proximity Engine

In Release 2.5, the Service Router has two engines:

•Request Routing Engine

•Proximity Engine

Note The Proximity Engine is only supported on the CDE205 platform.

The Request Routing Engine contains all the functionality that was part of the Service Router in Release 2.4 and previous releases. Because the Service Router now contains the Proximity Engine, the original Service Router functionality has been encapsulated and renamed the Request Routing Engine.

The Service Router can be configured as both the Request Routing Engine and the Proximity Engine, or the Service Router can be configured only as the Request Routing Engine. Additionally, the Service Router can act as a standalone Proximity Engine by not configuring the Request Routing Engine as the authoritative DNS server.

The Proximity Engine contains the functionality of the Proximity Servers used for proximity-based routing. The Proximity Engine peers with network routers and listens in on route updates to get topology and routing path information. This information is used to locate the closest resource in the network. Real-time measurements of reachability and delay are also considered.

Authorization Service with Geographical Blocking

In Release 2.4, when Authorization Service was enabled, client requests from unknown hosts were blocked by default. The Authorization Service verified that all client requests had a router fully qualified domain name (RFQDN) or origin server that is recognized as part of a delivery service.

Release 2.5 introduces functionality to block client requests based on client's geographic locations or the client's IP address. Each delivery service participating in the Authorization Service has an XML configuration file that contains information on the allowed IP address ranges and geographic locations, and the denied IP address ranges and geographic locations.

In order to block client requests based on geographical location, the SE communicates with a Geo-Location server, which maps IP addresses to a geographic locations. The Geo-Location server, which is the same geo-location server used for location-based routing on the SR, identifies the geographic location of a client request by the country, state, and city of the client.

When the SR is marked as inactive or is marked with server offload on the CDSM it stops responding to DNS queries. Instead, the SR sends a SERVFAIL error as the DNS response, and for RTSP/HTTP requests, the SR sends a 503 Service Unavailable message.

SR request routing burst control.

Request routing burst control allows you to configure the number of requests the SR redirects to the SEs during a burst in requests. That is, what transactions per second (TPS) the SEs can handle successfully. This enhancement augments the SE keepalive, which communicates SE resource usages to the SR.

There is now an optional date-range keyword for some of the errorlog files.

CDSM GUI Report Statistics changed.

The Bytes Served report has been changed to the Bandwidth Served report and now indicates the total outgoing bandwidth of the protocol engine.

SNMP MIB objects added for Flash Media Streaming.

The following MIB objects were added for Flash Media Streaming:

•cdsFmsTotalVODRequests

•cdsFmsTotalLiveRequests

•cdsFmsTotalLiveDVRRequests

•cdsFmsTotalProxyRequests

•cdsFmsRequestsServerErrorTotal

•cdsFmsRequestsClientErrorTotal

•cdsFmsPerfBytesServedTotal

•cdsFmsHCPerfBytesServedTotal

SNMP MIB objects removed.

The following MIB objects are obsoleted:

•cdsHttpRequestsNoCacheTotal.0

•cdsHttpRequestsBytesServedHits.0

•cdsHttpRequestsBytesServedMisses.0

•cdsHttpRequestsImsInmTotalCache.0

•cdsHttpRequestsImsInmTotalReval.0

•cdsHttpRequestsBytesClientIn.0

•cdsHttpRequestsBytesClientOut.0

•cdsHttpRequestsBytesServerIn.0

•cdsHttpRequestsBytesServerOut.0

•cdsHttpHCRequestsNoCacheTotal.0

•cdsHttpHCRequestsBytesServedHits.0

•cdsHttpHCRequestsBytesServedMisses.0

•cdsHttpHCRequestsImsInmTotalCache.0

•cdsHttpHCRequestsImsInmTotalReval.0

•cdsHttpHCRequestsBytesClientIn.0

•cdsHttpHCRequestsBytesClientOut.0

•cdsHttpHCRequestsBytesServerIn.0

•cdsHttpHCRequestsBytesServerOut.0

•cdsHttpPerfSamplingTime.0

•cdsHttpPerfServiceTime.0

•cdsHttpPerfHitServiceTime.0

•cdsHttpPerfMissServiceTime.0

•cdsHttpPerfObjectSize.0

•cdsHttpPerfCpuLoad.0

System Requirements

The Internet Streamer CDS runs on the CDE100, CDE200, CDE205, and the CDE220 hardware models. Table 2 lists the different device modes for the Cisco Internet Streamer CDS software, and which CDEs support them.

Table 2 Supported CDEs

Device Mode

CDE100

CDE200

CDE205

CDE220

CDSM

Yes

No

Yes

No

SR

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

SE

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Release 2.5.1 supports the CDE220 2G2 platform. There are a total of ten gigabit Ethernet ports in this CDE. The first two ports (1/0 and 2/0) are management ports. The remaining eight gigabit Ethernet ports can be configured as one port channel. See the Cisco Content Delivery Engine CDE205/220/420 Hardware Installation Guide forset up and installation procedures for the CDE220 2G2.

The CDE100 can run as the CDSM, while theCDE200 can run as the Service Router or the Service Engine. See the Cisco Content Delivery Engine CDE100/200/300/400 Hardware Installation Guide forset up and installation procedures for the CDE100 and CDE200.

The CDE205 can run as the CDSM, Service Router, or Service Engine. See the Cisco Content Delivery Engine CDE205/220/420 Hardware Installation Guide forset up and installation procedures for the CDE205.

Note For performance information, see the release-specific performance bulletin.

Limitations and Restrictions

This release contains the following limitations and restrictions:

•There is a 4 KB maximum limit for HTTP request headers. This has been added to prevent client-side attacks, including overflowing buffers in the Web Engine.

•There is no network address translation (NAT) device separating the CDEs from one another.

•Do not run the CDE with the cover off. This disrupts the fan air flow and causes overheating.

Note The CDS does not support network address translation (NAT) configuration, where one or more CDEs are behind the NAT device or firewall. The workaround for this, if your CDS network is behind a firewall, is to configure each internal and external IP address pair with the same IP address.

The CDS does support clients that are behind a NAT device or firewall that have shared external IP addresses. In other words, there could be a firewall between the CDS network and the client device. However, the NAT device or firewall must support RTP/RTSP.

Note In Release 2.5.1, configuring Replication Bandwidth Scheduling is only supported on a per SE-basis; Device Group configuration of Replication Bandwidth Scheduling is not supported.

Important Notes

To maximize the content delivery performance of a CDE200, CDE205, or CDE220, we recommend you do the following:

1. Use port channel for all client-facing traffic.

Configure interfaces on the quad-port gigabit Ethernet cards into a single port-bonding interface. Use this bonding channel, which provides instantaneous failover between ports, for all client-facing traffic. Use interfaces number 1 and 2 (the two on-board Ethernet ports) for intra-CDS traffic, such as management traffic, and configure these two interfaces either as standby or port-channel mode. Refer to the Cisco Internet Streamer CDS 2.4 Software Configuration Guide for detailed instruction.

2. Use the client IP address as the load balancing algorithm.

Assuming ether-channel (also known as port-channel) is used between the upstream router/switch and the SE for streaming real-time data, the ether-channel load balance algorithms on the upstream switch/router and the SE should be configured as "Src-ip" and "Destination IP" respectively. Using this configuration ensures session stickiness and general balanced load distribution based on clients' IP addresses. Also, distribute your client IP address space across multiple subnets so that the load balancing algorithm is effective in spreading the traffic among multiple ports.

Note The optimal load-balance setting on the switch for traffic between the Content Acquirer and the edge Service Engine is dst-port, which is not available on the 3750, but is available on the Catalyst 6000 series.

3. For high-volume traffic, separate HTTP and WMT.

The CDE200, CDE205, or CDE220 performance has been optimized for HTTP and WMT bulk traffic, individually. While it is entirely workable to have mixed HTTP and WMT traffic flowing through a single CDE200 simultaneously, the aggregate performance may not be as optimal as the case where the two traffic types are separate, especially when the traffic volume is high. So, if you have enough client WMT traffic to saturate a full CDE200, CDE205, or CDE220 capacity, we recommend that you provision a dedicated CDE200 to handle WMT; and likewise for HTTP. In such cases, we do not recommended that you mix the two traffic types on all CDE servers which could result in suboptimal aggregate performance and require more CDE200, CDE205, or CDE220 servers than usual.

4. For mixed traffic, turn on the HTTP bitrate pacing feature.

If your deployment must have Streamers handle HTTP and WMT traffic simultaneously, it is best that you configure the Streamer to limit each of its HTTP sessions below a certain bitrate (for example, 1Mbps, 5Mbps, or the typical speed of your client population). This prevents HTTP sessions from running at higher throughput than necessary, and disrupting the concurrent WMT streaming sessions on that Streamer. To turn on this pacing feature, use the HTTP bitrate field in the CDSM Delivery Service GUI page.

Please be aware of the side effects of using the following commands for Movie Streamer:

Config# movie-streamer advanced client idle-timeout <30-1800>

Config# movie-streamer advanced client rtp-timeout <30-1800>

These commands are only intended for performance testing when using certain testing tools that do not have full support of the RTCP receiver report. Setting these timeouts to high values causes inefficient tear down of client connections when the streaming sessions have ended.

For typical deployments, it is preferable to leave these parameters set to their defaults.

5. For ASX requests, when the Service Router redirects the request to an alternate domain or to the origin server, the Service Router does not strip the .asx extension, this is because the .asx extension is part of the original request. If an alternate domain or origin server does not have the requested file, the request fails. To ensure requests for asx files do not fail, make sure the .asx files are stored on the alternate domain and origin server.

6. When upgrading from a previous release, the primary interface is converted to a streaming-interface by the upgrade process. When configuring new delivery traffic interfaces, either because of a new installation or because of removing existing configuration, you must use the streaming-interface command.

Open Caveats

This release contains the following open caveats:

Windows Media Streaming

•CSCtb54485

Symptom:

When multiple bit-rate live stream-splitting serves two Windows Media player with different connection speeds (for example, 128kbps and 768kbps), the first player plays the stream, but the stream stops when the second player sends an RTSP request, even though the second stream would stay up.

Condition:

A player is connected to the edge SE of a WMT live stream, and a second player joins the same live stream at a different bit-rate.

Workaround:

None, but if the first player reconnects (at the same low bit-rate) to the edge SE, it would reestablish the (low bit-rate) stream while the other (high bit-rate) stream would stay up.

•CSCsq46063

Symptom:

Multiple stale outgoing sessions are displayed for the show statistics wmt streamstat command.

Condition:

When an SSPL broadcast publishing point is stopped and a managed live Windows Media Streaming program is scheduled.

Workaround:

Stale sessions are removed periodically and do not impact streaming. Alternatively, you can enable the SSPL broadcast publishing point source.

Flash Media Streaming

•CSCsz96307

Symptom:

This issue happens when switching streams at the end of play duration. The transaction log shows stopping of the stream that is not yet switched to.

Condition:

It only happens when switching at the end of the current playing stream to another stream.

Workaround:

No workaround.

•CSCta44470

Symptom:

This issue is seen when the client requests a live stream to the SE and after about eight hours, the client stream is stopped and the connection gets closed.

Condition:

This issue occurs only when playing a live stream continuously for more than eight hours to a single client. If the clients keeps connecting to the live stream and disconnecting from the live stream, this issue does not occur.

Workaround:

No workaround, however the next click does work.

•CSCtb56430

Symptom:

The issue occurs on the Service Router when too many redirect requests keep coming in, because lots of file descriptors are opened by the Adobe Flash Media Server processes when the system is under stress and the CPU utilization is around 90 percent. A few hours after stopping the test, the memory usage is kept at the same level without dropping.

Condition:

This issue only happens when the CPU usage is about 90 percent and RTMP redirect requests keep coming in.

Workaround:

No workaround.

•CSCtb74260

Symptom:

The issue was found in a three-level setup with an interactive application. The client first makes a request for VOD-like streaming to the edge SE and the Flash Media Streaming service is restarted on the edge SE. Then the client makes the same request again, the stream gets closed after about four minutes.

Condition:

This issue only happens in a three-level setup. Two-level setups do not have this issue. Also, this issue only happens when the Flash Media Streaming service is restarted on the edge SE while streaming. Lastly, this issue only happens for interactive applications.

Workaround:

No workaround.

•CSCtc99610

Symptom:

The issues is seen with VOD-like streaming with an interactive application. CDS-IS internally caches a file segment up to two GB. After the cache reaches more than two GB, the SE cannot serve the previous content.

Condition:

This only happens in three SE chaining setup. Two-level setups do not have this issue.

Workaround:

No workaround.

Proximity Engine

•CSCtd39820

Symptom:

Service Router may not redirect client requests based on the correct IGP proximity rating when proximity based routing is configured.

Condition:

One or more Service Engines or the client requesting content are in a subnet advertised as a BGP route with its next-hop also advertised by BGP and only BGP.

Workaround:

Make sure the BGP next-hop is advertised by IGP.

•CSCtd30613

Symptom:

When the Proximity Engine contains a large number of OSPF types 7, 9, 10, or 11 LSAs, using the show ip ospf database detail command may cause OSPF process to restart.

Condition:

The problem can only happen when OSPF is enabled on the Proximity Engine, when the Proximity Engine has hundreds of type 7, 9, 10, or 11 LSAs in the OSPF database, and when the show command show ip ospf database detail is entered.

Workaround:

Use the show ip ospf database command.

Platform

•CSCtd16093

Symptom:

CDS-IS software does not currently support the lowering of SMART alarms. Should an event which triggers a SMART alarm clear, the SMART alarm will remain raised until the CDS-IS system has been reloaded.

For a CDS-IS system, the typical SMART alarm pertains to drive failure prediction, and will be raised whenever a hard drive predicts its own imminent failure. The nature of this type of alarm is persistent. Once the prediction is made, it will not be cleared. Once more, because CDS-IS only supports replacing failed drives across reboot, the consequence of not lowering the alarm will go largely unnoticed.

Condition:

Unlike the typical 'failure prediction' alarm, other SMART conditions, namely the temperature alarm, are intermittent, and can be raised and lowered over time. This style of alarm is effected by the current bug, and will not be lowered once they have been raised.

Workaround:

The current workaround, is to monitor the smart conditions using the show disk smart detail command. Once the situation has been cleared, the system can be rebooted, and the alarms will be gone.

•CSCtd21115

Symptom:

Using the clock timezone command to configure a custom daylight savings time is not supported in Release 2.5.1.

Condition:

When configuring a custom daylight savings time as the time zone on a device using the CLI, results in a "Custom daylight savings time are unsupported at this time."

Workaround:

There is no workaround.

CDNFS

•CSCta35923

Symptom:

CDNFS usage shows used storage on a Service Engine that has been unassigned from all delivery services.

Condition:

Content not removed from Service Engine that has been unassigned from all delivery services.

Workaround:

Use the cdnfs cleanup start command to remove the content that remained after unassigning the SE from all delivery services.

Cache Router

•CSCta92439

Symptom:

Cache Router core dumps with Movie Streamer Live traffic is under stress.

Condition:

This happens very randomly and probably after 4-5 days of stress traffic, when the Cache Router may not be able to process the client request. The impact is minimal, as the protocol engine fails over to next upstream SE or Origin Server. Client playback should not get effected.

Workaround:

None.

CDSM

•CSCsx19763

Symptom:

When an SE is reloading, the Flash Media Streaming Wholesale License page in the CDSM does not respond, the page is blank for several seconds, and a warning dialog box displays, "The creation/modification will not proceed."

Workaround:

None. The issue does not impact the functionality of the CDSM. All pages except the Wholesale License page, are responsive.

None. The CDSM recovers after about five minutes.

•CSCtd28332

Symptom:

Multicast-in-multicast-out (MIMO) Movie Streamer live programs do not work, because the Unicast URL and Multicast URL fields in the CDSM GUI are exactly the same.

Condition:

This happens when creating a Movie Streamer live program with the multicast-out option.

Workaround:

No workaround so far, currently we cannot create MIMO Movie Stream live programs.

Resolved Caveats

The following caveats have been resolved since Cisco Internet Streamer CDS Release 2.4.3 Not all the resolved issues are mentioned here. The following list highlights the resolved caveats associated with customer deployment scenarios.

Windows Media Streaming

•CSCtc98771

Symptom:

Stale session in Play state is displayed when the show statistics wmt streamstat command is entered. Even after the session is not increasing the bytes.

•CSCtc63215

Symptom:

DSCP value is not set for RTSPU.

•CSCtc57849

Symptom:

SE mark fast-cache for RTSPT when fast-cache is disabled.

•CSCtc33684

Symptom:

Only audio is available when HTTP request is used to playback some of the media files. These media files has audio track == 1 and video track = 31.

•CSCtc21243

Symptom:

SE to send A -record instead of AAAA-record for DNS resolution.

•CSCta25831

Symptom:

Windows Media Streaming core dumps during longevity testing.

Condition:

When multiple bit-rates, live, VOD, and protocols are used and a server-side playlist (SSPL) is used as the live source.

•CSCsx58932

Symptom:

Windows Media Streaming core dumps during testing of live streaming.

Condition:

This happens when a server-side playlist (SSPL) source is used and automation scripts are used as clients.

Flash Media Streaming

•CSCtb24647

Symptom:

This is regarding location leader loop issue. On further investigation we found the root cause that leads to this looping.

Condition:

The loop happens when the same set of SEs are assigned to both a failed program (the program fails due to encoder failure) and a successful program. When this particular combination occurs, the liveness query is not being sent from the child SE to the parent SE for the successful program. This causes the location leader selection to go wrong resulting in a loop.

•CSCta47619

Symptom:

The FMS core process generates a core dump file.

Condition:

The core dump occurs once in awhile during high-stress scenarios (that is, when the CPU and disk thresholds are reached). The high-stressed scenario is coupled with both cache-hit and cache-miss traffic for MPEG-4 VOD Flash Media Streaming.

CDSM

When device group based SE assignment to live program and priming configuration are done independently.

•CSCtb14034

Symptom:

SNMP settings are not applied to SE via Device Group.

Condition:

When the CDSM is upgraded from Release 2.3 to Release 2.4 and the following SNMP settings were configured in the database: Service Engine (Disk Read, Disk Write, Transaction Logging), Event, and MIB Persistent.

•CSCtb24668

Symptom:

The transaction log configuration from device group cannot apply to the SE in this special case.

Condition:

If configure any value from CLI and negative it, a CLI with default value will still show in running config.

•CSCtc42744

Symptom:

The CDSM GUI incorrectly accepts the same domain name for the Origin server and the SRDN during a modification of the fields.

Service Router

•CSCsy98504

Symptom:

SR core dumps with proximity-based or location-based routing when under stress.

Authorization Server

•CSCtc60985

Symptom:

Authorization Server lookup for domain name with mixed-case characters failed.

Acquisition and Distribution

•CSCtc83166

Symptom:

Acquisition and distribution processes are exited and the service disabled alarms are raised because the excessive usage of virtual memory. This issue could be due to more acquisition and distribution process usage or could happen in cache-miss scenarios.

•CSCtc07937

Symptom:

The Content Acquirer service stops working and the following critical alarm is seen in the output of show alarms detail command:

Kernel Streaming Engine

Memory leak due to Windows Media Streaming delivery service configured with priming for live radio delivery service.

•CSCtc98733

Symptom:

Windows Media Streaming engine hand-off caused KDB.

•CSCtc98738

Symptom:

A client disconnecting triggers an internal error in the Windows Media Streaming engine.

Platform

•CSCtc99024

Symptom:

Some hard disk drives are not recognized when the CDE200 gets a cold restart.

•CSCta27060

Symptom:

The link state of a switch port is always "up" when connected to a gigabit Ethernet over optical fiber interface on the SE. Depending on how the port channel and load-balancing are configured, this may cause the switch to send packets to a shut down interface on the SE.

Condition:

When the shutdown command is manually entered on a gigabit Ethernet over optical fiber interface

•CSCta22112

Symptom:

Changing the time zone to "daylight savings" (or "summer time") does not take affect.

If a Service Engine is configured with "dst-ip" as the load-balancing algorithm for a port-channel interface, all the traffic is sent out using only one of the interfaces, regardless of the destination.

SNMP

•CSCtc63501

Symptom:

SNMP MIBs are reporting the CPU on the Service Routers and a Content Acquirer as 100 percent, whereas when this is checked with the CLI using the top command, the CPU loading seems to be normal.

URL Manager

•CSCtd03738

Symptom:

The first request is SETUP not DESCRIBE so ClientInfo->request_info.request_url is a "000000....." string.

URL Signing

•CSCtb16478

Symptom:

RTSPD core dumps when url validation is done using private key signing when URL is signed using public key

Condition:

RTSPD core dump happens and requests are not served.

Upgrading to Release 2.5.1

The only supported upgrade paths are Release 2.4.x to Release 2.5.1. If you are running a release prior to Release 2.4.x, you must upgrade to Release 2.4.x before upgrading to Release 2.5.1.

Note Upgrading to Release 2.5.1 includes SHA-256-encrypted user passwords. If the config file contains users with SHA-256 encrypted passwords, if you downgrade to an earlier release, the user information will be lost because the older software cannot recognize the new method of encrypting passwords.

When upgrading to Release 2.5.1, configuring the Proximity Server port number field is no longer required for the Proximity-Based Routing feature. The port number for all Proximity servers is 7003.

Note Because the functionality of having the SR act as both the Request Routing Engine and the Proximity Server was not part of Release 2.4.x, downgrading from Release 2.5.1 to Release 2.4.x results in losing the configuration of 127.0.0.1 (SR loopback address) as the Proximity Server. All other Proximity Servers are still configured.

URL Public Key Signing

Table 3 describes the compatibility and results when using a prior CDS software release to perform URL signing and the current software release to perform URL validation.

Table 3 Release Compatibility of URL Signing and URL Validation

Release Used for URL Signing

Release Used for URL Validation

Results

2.3.x

2.4.3, 2.4.5, or 2.5.x

Does not work because the Release 2.3.x URL signing uses the port and schema for signing, but the port is stripped off during validation by the current software release.

2.4.3

2.5.1

Works for URL signing version 0, 1, or 2. and will not work for version 3 (CSCtb99898).

2.4.5

2.5.1

Works for URL signing version 0, 1, or 2. and will not work for version 3 (CSCtb99898).

Obtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request

For information on obtaining documentation, submitting a service request, and gathering additional information, see the monthly What's New in Cisco Product Documentation, which also lists all new and revised Cisco technical documentation, at:

Subscribe to the What's New in Cisco Product Documentation as a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed and set content to be delivered directly to your desktop using a reader application. The RSS feeds are a free service and Cisco currently supports RSS version 2.0.

All other trademarks mentioned in this document or website are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. (0908R)

Any Internet Protocol (IP) addresses used in this document are not intended to be actual addresses. Any examples, command display output, and figures included in the document are shown for illustrative purposes only. Any use of actual IP addresses in illustrative content is unintentional and coincidental.